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Elain Owen, a long standing member of Sharks, achieved some impressive results when competing in Cardiff last weekend returning home with two Gold medals.

The sole entrant from Sharks at the annual Tiger Bay Open Meet at the Cardiff International Pool, Elain was up against swimmers from across Wales in what is always a very popular and competitive gala in the swimming calendar.

On the Saturday, Elain, competing in her first event the 200m Breaststroke, swam a personal best time to win the Gold medal. Later that evening she again set another personal best wiping 5seconds off her previous best for the 200m Individual Medley.

The following day, Elain again delivered another impressive swim with a third personal best, this time in the 100m Breaststroke, which was good enough to win her a second Gold medal of the gala.

Sharks Head Coach Alan Webster said: “It’s really tough competing at this level and Elain coped brilliantly with the added pressure that comes with swimming in the international sized 50m pool in Cardiff. She certainly swam to her full potential and achieving personal best times in all three events is all you can ask. She can be very proud indeed of her performance and winning two Gold medals at this gala is a really impressive achievement.”

This year’s Club Presentation Evening honored its departing Head Coach Peter Swanton with the ‘Volunteer of the Year’ Award presented in recognition of his unstinting support to the Club.

Peter’s knowledge of the sport and coaching techniques has brought much needed expertise to the Club in the last 9 years.

He’s given the Club a huge amount of time, all on a voluntary basis. He first started as a qualified swimming teacher but hasn’t stood still in his own personal development completing an ASA Level 1 Coaching Qualification followed by a Level 2 qualification and more recently successfully completing a Level 3 qualification, no mean feat.

At the Club, he has led a team of voluntary assistant coaches as well as pool-side helpers and supervised training sessions across three weekday evenings as well as Sunday afternoons. He regularly travelled as far as Llandudno, Manchester, Cardiff & Swansea to support the Club’s swimmers at competition.

In 2015 he organised a charity swimathon and persuaded local sporting hero’s Ollie Gwilt and Warren Sinden to take part which helped to raise the event’s profile with £2,600 presented to the ‘Make a Wish Foundation’ and ‘The Anthony Nolan Trust’.

Pete was instrumental in getting the Club back in to competition after many years of inactivity. The last two years has seen his hard work come to fruition. In 2015, the Club won for the first time the East Clwyd Senior League which is swum over the course of three galas between Buckley, Connah’s Quay, Flint, Mold, Welshpool and Wrexham.

He has also steered Club swimmers to regular individual success at the annual North Wales Championships as well as at the National Championships. It is the swimmer that always comes first and foremost in Pete’s mind and he’ll be sorely missed by us all.

As for other awards, the trophy winners for 2016 included Jamie Marsden-Jones (Best Performance) for a great 100 Breaststroke at the Club Gala.

The Best Newcomer Award went to Poppy Livermore whilst Leighton Blagg has developed greatly and received the Most Improved Award.

The Club also recognized the commitment of its swimmers and this year’s Most Dedicated trophy went to Lois Birchall for her commitment at training and determination and positive attitude at the Club Gala.

The Swimmers Swimmer Awards, voted on by the swimmers themselves went jointly to Kate Jones & Cari Jones along with Tom Weaver.

The evening finished with a buffet and disco. Thank you in particular to Ann Jones (Club Secretary) for compering the evening and to Shirley Owen (Trophy Secretary) for arranging the certificates, medals, trophies, awards and all the engraving.

Tom Weaver won the Club’s first ever national Gold medal last weekend when he competed at the Swim Wales Summer Open Meet in Swansea and won the 50m Freestyle (14yrs) in a time of 27.06secs.

He also set personal best times to finish 5th and 8th in the 50m and 100m Backstroke and in other events finished 15th in the 100m Freestyle; 17th in the 50m Breaststroke and 14th in the 50m Butterfly.

The only other Club swimmer competing at Swansea this year was Finlay Jones (12yrs) who set a personal best time to finish 5th in the 50m Backstroke along with 13th in the 50m Freestyle and 50m Butterfly and 17th in the 100m Backstroke.

Last Saturday was our sixth and final trip to Holywell for the third round in the Junior Competition of the East Clwyd League.

It was another great outing for our swimmers where once again they did themselves and the Club proud.

Well done to everyone who’s taken part in this year’s rounds.

This Saturday it was our turn to host the gala and great to see parents stepping forward to help with the many tasks that go hand-in-hand with running these events. Special mention must go to the following individuals – Isabella Jones & Janet Gittins who organized the door & raffle; Bronwen Poole & Rachel Smith for officiating; Paula Edwards along with Head Coach Peter Swanton for supervising our swimmers poolside and Rhian Owen who helped run the meet software & record results.

As in previous rounds it was once again a very close run thing between ourselves and Wrexham who just pipped us to the post:

A great result though for our Head Coach Peter Swanton and our swimmers. With no 11yr old girls available to swim this weekend, our younger swimmers did brilliantly to swim up an age group.

Congratulations to Wrexham who retain the Junior Trophy for 2016 as well as having won the Senior Trophy earlier this year. As for Sharks, we finished in second place in both the Senior and Junior rounds which is a great achievement.

Well done everyone on what has been a great performance across all rounds for both our Senior & Junior teams.

The weekend saw a big turn out of Sharks with some 25 swimmers competing at the annual Cath Ankers Meet at Wrexham’s Water World.

The day long gala saw lots of great performances, competitive racing and personal bests were achieved by everyone.

Head Coach Peter Swanton said: “We saw some fantastic swimming. The day had it all, some great gutsy swims, lots of very good streamlining with our swimmers finishing hard and many winning their races in the last few metres. It was also really good to see the work they’ve been putting in on their breaststroke underwater phase making a real difference.”

Sunday saw Sharks taking part in a third aquathlon event of the year delivering more great results against very strong competition.

It wasn’t the best of days for an aquathlon with the day starting off dry but heavy rain soon moved in and the transition area was moved indoors half-way through the event. Despite the weather, it was nevertheless a very competitive event with typically 30 entrants in each age group with Sharks performing really strongly.

In the TriStart Category (8yrs) Poppy Livermore took 1st place pretty much leading from the start with a great swim putting her amongst some of the fastest in her event followed by a very quick transition which gave her a really healthy lead before putting in the fastest run in her age group and improving her time from the Shrewsbury event a few weeks ago by nearly 30seconds.

Freddie Murton-Jones (9/10yrs)was competing in his first event of the year and put in a really good performance finishing 8th in what was a very competitive race with just 14seconds between himself and a possible podium place.

Amelia finished 12th in the girls event with a huge personal best knocking over a minute off the time she achieved at Shrewsbury.

In the boys, Deiniol finished 7th putting in a good swim but a ‘hiccup’ at transition and having to hold up his race number belt during the run hindered him hugely and put a stop to any thoughts of a podium finish. A lesson learnt though – always check your kit, make sure it’s your race belt and not your dads!

The day finished nicely for Sharks in the boys T3 category (13/14yrs) with Carwyn Owen winning a very competitive race. Coming out of the pool in fourth place he had a bit of chasing to do but put in a really strong run to win the event by just 6seconds with just 10seconds separating the top 5 places.

A great day of racing, good performances all round and whilst not the best of weather conditions it was a very competitive event across all age groups and great to see Sharks doing so well.

A very warm weekend at Llandudno where we witnessed some pretty hot swimming too!

It was a quiet first day yesterday at the Swim Wales North Junior Development Meet with just Freddie Murton-Jones, Jack Lewis & Deiniol Owen making the journey north but between them they smashed a few personal bests with Freddie & Jack (10yrs) doing amazingly well in their first ever competitive 200m Freestyle.

Today was a lot busier with 11 Sharks taking part and some good swims all round and a few more big personal bests too.

It was great to see Leighton Blagg & Teilo Gittins-Turner competing in their first Swim Wales gala and handling the pressure like seasoned pros!

The girls weren’t to be outdone though with regular gala competitors Elain Owen & Megan Smith chipping away at some of their personal bests. It was great to see Ela Owen, Grace Jones & Lois Birchall competing again and they too were rewarded with some personal bests.

Dyfrig Jones (11yrs) missed the first day but made up for that absence today with a 2nd place in the 100Fly & 3rd in the 200IM.

The day ended on a high for Sharks with Deiniol winning the boys 12yrs Pentathlon Award whilst Jack earned himself a Pentathlon Medal for his final placing in the 10yrs age group.

It was all rounded off a few minutes later by our boys 10yrs Medley Relay team (Teilo / Leighton / Jack / Freddie) who contributed to a hugely exciting race where they fought back to clinch Gold in the closing stages of the race. Just goes to show, NEVER, EVER GIVE UP!

A great couple of days swimming last weekend at this year’s Wrexham Spring Meet.

Too many personal bests and great performances to start mentioning individuals but we will single out Billy Hunt who set a meet record of 31.06sec in the boys 16years & over 50m breaststroke. Full results attached:

Sharks were represented by a good mix of experienced and novice swimmers at the Bangor Annual Diddy Meet at Llandudno Swimming Centre on Saturday (9 April 2016) coming away with lots of personal bests, a nice haul of medals with our novices also putting on a fine display in their first gala.

All credit to the Bangor Club, it’s always a good meet and one which Sharks usually enjoy and this year was no different with 6 boys and 7 girls making the journey north and coming away with a series of great performances.

Novice swimmers Taiya Griffiths (9yrs) and Callum Morgan (10yrs) performed very confidently in their first gala as did Freddie Murton-Jones (10yrs) in his first competition back after a nasty accident. Taiya finished with two Top 10 swims in the 50 Breast & Free as did Callum in the 50 Back & Free.

Freddie swam brilliantly in the 50 Free and was rewarded for his efforts with a very well deserved Silver medal as well as a Top 10 finish in the 50 Fly.

Our more experienced swimmers were not to be outdone though and were led by Deiniol Owen whose two Silver (50 Fly & Back) and three Bronze (50 Free, Breast & 100IM) gave him enough points overall to take the Top Boy Award in the 12yrs age group. Jamie Marsden Jones (13yrs) put in some fine performances too with Top 10 finishes in the 50 Free, Fly, Back & 100IM whilst Rebecca Edwards (13yrs) did similarly in the 50 Fly & 100IM.

Top 10 finishes were also achieved by Robbie Marsden Jones (11yrs) in the 50 Fly; Maddie Griffiths (11yrs) in the 50 Back and Kim Vaughan (10yrs) in the 50 Breast, the latter being very unlucky to miss out on Bronze by just two tenths of a second.

Amelia Livermore, Elain Owen & Meg Smith along with Zac McCourt (11yrs) all delivered some fine personal bests knocking off up to 5seconds in some of their events and showing big improvement.

Thanks to our Head Coach Peter Swanton for being poolside to guide our swimmers and thank you to parents Alwyn Jones, Kevin Owen, Paula Edwards & Rachel Smith for helping to officiate throughout the day.

All in all, a great days swimming enjoyed by swimmers & parents alike.

Three Sharks qualified for the Swim Wales Long Course Championships at Swansea this Easter Weekend with two of them narrowly missing out on Bronze medals.

Brothers Carwyn & Deiniol Owen along with Tom Weaver had met the qualification standards for this year’s Welsh Championships and travelled to Swansea to compete against the best in Wales.

On the Friday, all three competed in the 50m Breaststroke where Deiniol finished 10th in the 11-12years age group with a personal best time of 44.53secs.

In the 13-14years group, Tom finished 12th with a time of 38.63 whilst Carwyn qualified for the final later that evening where he narrowly missed out on a bronze medal finishing 4th in a personal best time of 36.55.

Tom competed in a further 3 events over the weekend and also just missed out on a medal finishing 4th in the final of the 50m Back in a personal best time of 32.40.

On the final day of swimming he finished 5th in the 50m Freestyle in a best time of 28.03 and 15th in the 50m Butterfly in a time of 32:64.

Well done to all three swimmers. It’s really tough competing at this level but all three coped brilliantly with the added pressures that come with swimming at the National Championships and all swam to their potential achieving some big personal best times in all the events entered.